Excerpt from a local toaster:
OMINOUS UNKNOWN
KILLER IS STILL
LARGE
A picture of smiling Jeff the Potato was at the top of the page. I recoiled in horror, throwing the burnt, moldy page away into a fire.
The page said, which I would have read if I hadn’t thrown the paper into a fire, “I had a bad dream where I was dreaming but woke up and my door was open even though I closed it, or at least I did in my dream. So I dragged myself under the blankets to shake and cry in fear so I could fall asleep instead of closing the door. I was worried that there was an 8-foot tall monster with purple eyes and brown shoes staring at me outside my door. I peeked out from my armor of thin sheet and didn’t see a monster.”
Oh wait, that was my story. I’ll continue.
“PHEWWWWW!”
I wiped the sweat off my brow, eyelids, and eyeballs, and jumped back into my bed totally excited for sleep and snoring like I’ve never been excited before.
An 8-foot monster with purple eyes and brown shoes jumped out from behind my pillow.
“OH no! He’s going to eat me! I’m going to be eaten!” I screamed, running away in fear.
“I’m going to eat you! RAWR!” Said the big-monster.
I jumped out of bed and we ran circles around it for a few minutes until I said, “STOP BEAST!”
It let out a solitary, salty tear of shame.
“You don’t have to eat me! We can be friends forever!”
“Sniff… really?”
“Yeah!”
“Oh, that’s so nice… No one’s ever wanted to be my friend before!”
“Aww, you big lug of a beast,” I patted his paw.
He wouldn’t know my scheme. None of them ever knew. Night after night, I had drawn monster after monster into a false illusion of security. It was simple, really. Spending hours at a time searching, studying, and following the directions of hundreds of “rituals” where I would draw these foul beasts into my dimension, and I’d narrow down my choices of rituals. The rituals I use now are the ones I found easiest and the quickest to carry out. It’s all about efficiency, especially in my business.
The simplest and quickest ritual was an obscure one, but proved effective. I only had to knock 6 times on a mirror, do the chicken dance while twirling in a clockwise motion while my eyes remained closed (if I opened them I WOULD DIE) while gently humming like a bee, and repeating this three times. Oh, it had to be done before midnight, but anytime before. Also, all your toilet covers had to be closed and you must be wearing fake antlers. After a while, I realized that the only common theme of these rituals is how hilarious you act. The more hilarious, the higher the success rate. I once saw a spirit of some sort in the corner of my room videotaping me with a translucent “spirit” camera as I jumped from foot to foot calling out to a monster named Jabboof to reveal itself while I was half-naked and wore hundreds of rubber bands around my arms. Huh. I was so angry. Anyways, I'm getting off track. Then you had to open your bedroom door and lie in bed and pretend to be trying to sleep. You will feel something cold in your right hand and you will lift it to your face to find a toaster. There’s a burnt, moldy paper inside. You take the paper and read the first three lines, but throw it away in horror at the memory of these ritual instructions. A fire will suddenly appear in order to burn it. You remember that the instructions tell you that the paper describes a boy telling his story. You remember it’s describing your story, and continue narrating yourself in your head because everyone always does.
So the monster and I were friends for a while. I made it wear one of my grandma’s dresses and we went to a
video game store where a creepy man was giving away label-less games for free (like I would take them, idiot) who suckered in a few people. Later we went to our local Fazzbear pizzeria, which was okay because the animatronics didn’t smell as bad of an obvious death smell as usual, and only the duck was blurting out demonic, backwards language. We got pepperoni pizza, which sucked. Why do we even go there? Oh right, it’s only fast food place besides Joe’s Smelly Feet Shack.
So on a moonlit night, the monster told me his name was Zapydo since I had been calling him monster all this time. Now that I think about it, it was kind suspicious.
We were sitting all quiet and flat lined until a song played in the distance.
“Dundundidundundidundundun, doo dee, doo dee, du du du doo dee… Hornhornhornhorn, doo dee, doo dee, du du du doo dee… Hornhorn, hornhorn, horn.”
It was a song that rustled up my indignation and perpetual inner conflicts. I looked out, and in the distance were a man and woman bizarrely dancing in front of a white brick wall… or was it a chain link fence? Wait, where’d that disco-ball come from?
“We’re no strangers to luuurrve… You know the rules, and so do IIIII!! A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of, you wouldn’t get this from any other guuuyyy!!!”
Me and the monster Zapydo were silent, intrigued.
“I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling, gotta make you understand!!”
Me and Zapydo leaned in closer.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and dessert you!!”
I heard and pondered deeply over his words.
“Always gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, always gonna tell a lie and hurt you!!!”
I thought, “Wait a minute…”
The song continued with more strange lyrics like, “Your body’s been aching, but you’re too scared to say it” and, “And if you ask for your release then, I’ll make you too blind to run free.”
“Woah…” I said. I started shaking in fear. The two dancers continued twirling and doing a grandpa-style dance in the distance.
“Never gonna give you up, always gonna tear you down, always gonna run around and convert you!”
The monster looked at me suspiciously.
“Your real name’s not Jackie…” It hesitantly slurred.
“Yeah,” I answered simply, my game then shown for what it was.
“And you were trying to kidnap me, weren’t you…?" It asked in disbelief.
“Yeah, I was. I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling rickrolls!”
He got up and ran with a girly scream, his arms flailing wildly in a counter-clockwise motion.
So... If anyone sees an eight-foot tall monster with purple eyes, brown shoes, and a bright green/orange/brown dress with flowers that's 9 sizes too small for it, you know where it came from. To send it back, you have to put a bucket that's been used as a toilet at some point over your head and sing a campfire song, preferably a Spongebox Squaretanx one, and do back flips for 4 meters, and at some point must do a flip over a trash can. Also, wear heels. It helps to return them to their realm faster, for some reason.